How Velociti transformed its financial system with ease and flexibility

Velociti, a global provider of enterprise technology solutions, helps meet complex business needs by optimizing technology investments, lowering costs and improving employee and customer acceptance through innovative design, rapid installation and deployment and proactive support services for a broad range of transportation and networking technologies.

When using a legacy financials system, Velociti faced constraints and manual functions, with its team printing and sending invoices by mail and processing and costing work orders by hand. As the volume of transactions increased, Velociti was having a hard time keeping up with demand and completing month-end close as quickly as possible.

Conversely, Velociti was performing other operational tasks in Salesforce, such as the initiation of work orders. The Velociti team enjoyed the flexibility of the Salesforce platform and it knew that flexibility would be at the forefront of its search criteria as it looked for a new system.

Thus, the company embarked on the journey of looking for a system that could automate accounting processes, deliver visibility into costing and revenue and provide flexibility to fit the team’s needs.

Flexibility is key

During the search, Velociti discovered Nextworld’s Enterprise Applications Platform (EAP) which offered the possibility of continuing to innovate by using its No-Code Studio. The tool would allow the organization to easily build and extend applications to meet its exact needs.

“What sold me on Nextworld was the ability to customize the platform without relying on outside programmers,” Tim Kats, VP and general manager at Velociti, said.

“All of the other vendors we talked to made it seem like it wouldn’t be easy to customize their systems.”

Additionally, Velociti was inclined to partner with Nextworld because of its culture. Rather than treating Velociti like it was a cookie-cutter, Nextworld took the time to understand its business and pain points, which was reflected in the statement of work that was presented.

“I could write a book on the difference between what other vendors presented and what [Nextworld’s] team presented,” Cheryl Saxton, VP of technology and innovation at Velociti, shared.

“The level of detail they provided gave us so much confidence that they knew what they were doing and we were going to come in at or under budget.”

The biggest factor in Velociti’s decision was flexibility. Throughout the sales process and conversations with Nextworld customers, Velociti saw how flexible Nextworld EAP was and how it could help it as it continues to grow its business.

What was implemented

As a result, Velociti was able to complete its Nextworld implementation in six months – making it an on-time, on-budget project.

“How quickly [the Nextworld] team was able to migrate the data from our legacy system onto the Nextworld EAP really speaks to the flexibility of the platform,” Saxton said.

Along with the Nextworld EAP, Velociti purchased the No-Code Studio and the Financials, Procurement, Manufacturing and Projects business suites.

Velociti’s team used the No-Code Studio to build an integration between Nextworld and Salesforce. Now, when Velociti team members enter work orders into Salesforce, they automatically become projects in Nextworld, giving managers and the accounting team an easy and powerful way of collecting and managing supply, manufacturing and costs associated with customer orders.

With Nextworld Project Costing, Velociti team members get earlier visibility into the ongoing costs and profitability, which supports ongoing improvements to pricing models.

Velociti is planning to use the Procurement suite to create purchase orders for contractors and subcontractors. Historically, team members have had a difficult time keeping track of the details surrounding their contractor purchase orders. With Nextworld, they will be able to manage all purchase order details from a single location.

The view of the bright future

Since the integration with Salesforce, Velociti has used Nextworld to automate many invoicing processes. For the data-entry components that still need to be done manually, Nextworld built templates for Velociti.

By streamlining processes and automating manual tasks, Velociti was able to avoid hiring two additional employees for their accounting department and achieve immense time savings.

“I used to spend three to four days on month-end close,” Kats said. “Now, it only takes me one day.”

Velociti has also used Nextworld to provide more granular and readily available data surrounding its revenue and profitability. Since work order details in Salesforce are directly updated in Nextworld, Velociti can see exact details about individual project costs and profits in real-time.

One of the ongoing benefits Velociti has found with Nextworld has been reduced development hours and professional service dollars. The team can do so much themselves in terms of customization because Nextworld makes it easy with the No-Code Studio.

Rob Brown, a business systems analyst at Velociti, creates a great deal of customizations within Nextworld. One of his biggest projects involved consolidating financial data from multiple tables into a live, interactive report for the accounting department.

“I really, really enjoy it,” Brown said. “I feel comfortable with the system, and Nextworld is very responsive if I have a question or need support.”

Most enterprise systems require users to rebuild or rework customizations after a new release, which can be a costly and time-consuming process. Because of this, many organizations choose not to upgrade their systems, forcing them to incur technical debt and locking them into soon-to-be antiquated technologies.

With Nextworld, Velociti achieved the flexibility it set out to find. The team has used the time savings to do more analysis and become nimbler and they have plans to create even more automation through system integrations. The opportunities are truly endless.

“Everybody says they’re flexible, but with Nextworld, there was some trust in that flexibility and it has come to fruition,” Saxton said.